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President Barack Obama's last press conference of the year; Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired December 16, 2016 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[15:00:00] BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I just received a couple weeks back, it wasn't widely reported on. A report from our cyber security commission that outlines a whole range of strategies to do a better job on this. But it's difficult because it's not all housed -- you know, the target of cyber-attacks is not one entity but it's widely dispersed and a lot of it is private like the DNC, you know. It's not a branch of government. We can't tell people what to do. What we can do is inform them, get best practices.

What we can also do is to, on a bilateral basis, warn other countries against these kinds of attacks and we have done that in the past. So, just as I told Russia to stop it and indicated there will be consequence whence they do it, the Chinese have, in the past, engaged in cyber-attacks directed at our companies to steal trade secrets and proprietary technology. And I had to have the same conversation with president Xi and what we have seen is some evidence that they have reduced but not completely eliminated these activities, partly because they can use cutouts. One of the problems with the internet and cyber issues is that there's not always a return address. And by the time you catch up to it, attributing what happened to a particular government can be difficult. Not always provable in court even though our intelligence communities can make an assessment.

We what we have also tried to do is start creating some international norms about this to prevent some sort of cyber arms race because we obviously have offensive capabilities as well as defensive capabilities. And my approach is not a situation which everybody is worse off because folks are constantly attacking each other back and forth, but putting some guardrails around the behavior of nation states, including our adversaries, just so they understand that whatever they do to us we can potential lip do to them.

We do have some special challenges because often times our economy is more digitalized, it is more vulnerable, partly because we are a wealthier nation and we are more wired than some of these other countries. And we have a more open society and engage in less control and censorship over what happens over the internet which is also part of what makes us special.

Last point, and the reason I'm going on here is because I know that you guys have a lot of questions about this and I haven't addressed all of you directly about it. With respect to response. My principle goal leading up to the election was making sure that the election itself went off without a hitch, that it was not tarnished, and that it did not feed any sense in the public that somehow tampering had taken place with the actual process of voting. And we accomplished that. That does not mean that we are not going to respond, it simply meant that we had a set of priorities leading up to the election that were of the utmost importance.

Our goal continues to be to send a clear message to Russia or others not to do this to us because we can do stuff to you. But it is also important for us to do that in a thoughtful methodical way. Some of it we do publicly. Some of it we will do in a way that they know but not everybody will. And I know that there have been folks out there who suggest somehow that if we went out there and made big announcements and thumped our chests about a bunch of stuff that somehow that would potentially spook the Russians. But keep in mind that we already have enormous numbers of sanctions against the Russians.

The relationship between us and Russia has deteriorated, sadly, significantly over the last several years. And so how we approach an appropriate response that increases costs for them for behavior like this in the future but does not create problems for us is something that's worth taking the time to think through and figure out. And that's exactly what we have done.

And so at a point in time where we've taken certain actions that we can divulge publicly, we will do so. There are times where the message will go - will be directly received by the Russians and not publicized. And I should point out, by the way, part of why the Russians have been effective on this is because they don't go around announcing what they are doing. It's not like Putin's going around the world publicly saying look what we did. Wasn't that clever? He denies it. So the idea that somehow public shaming is going to be effective. I think doesn't read the thought process in Russia very well. OK?

[15:06:10] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did Clinton lose because of the hacking?

OBAMA: I'm going to let all the political pundits in this town have a long discussion about what happened in the election. It was a fascinating election. So, you know, I'm sure there are going to be a lot of books written about it.

I have said what I think is important for the Democratic Party going forward rather than try to parse every aspect of the election. And I have said before I couldn't be prouder of Secretary Clinton, her outstanding service, I she has worked tirelessly on behalf of the American people. And I don't think she was treated fairly during the election. I think the coverage of her and the issues was troubling.

But, having said that, what I have been most focused on, appropriate for the fact that I'm not going to be a politician in about -- was is it, 32 days, 31, 34?

(LAUGHTER)

OBAMA: What I have said is that I can maybe give some counsel and advice for Democratic Party. And I think that the thing we have to spend the most time on, because it is the thing we have the most control over is how do we make sure that we are showing up in places where I think Democratic policies are need, where they are helping, where they are making a difference but where people feel as if they are not being heard and where Democrats are characterized as coastal liberal latte sipping, you know, politically correct out of touch folks.

We have to be in those communities. And I have seen that when we are in those communities it makes a difference. That's how I became president. I became a U.S. senator not just because I had a strong base in Chicago but because I was driving around down state Illinois and going to fish fries and sitting in VFW halls and talking to farmers. And I didn't win every one of their votes but they got a sense of what I was talking about, what I cared about, that I was for working people. That I was for the middle-class. That the reason I was interested in strengthening unions and raising the minimum wage and rebuilding our infrastructure and making sure that parents had decent child care and family leave was because my own family's history wasn't that different from theirs even if I looked a little bit different. Same thing in Iowa. And so the question is how do we rebuild that party as a whole so that there's not a county in any state -- I don't care how red -- where we don't have a presence and we are not making the argument because I think we have the better argument.

But that requires a lot of work. You know, it's been something that I have been able to do successfully in my own campaigns. It's not something I have been able to transfer to candidates in midterms and sort of build a sustaining organization around. That's something that I would have liked to have done more of but it's kind of hard to do when you are also dealing with a whole bunch of issues here in the White House. And that doesn't mean, though, that it can't be done. And I think there are going to be a lot of talented folks out there, a lot of progressives who share my values who are going to be leading the charge in the years to come.

Michelle Kosinski of CNN.

[15:10:18] MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Thank you. This week we heard Hillary Clinton talk about how she thinks that the FBI director's most recent announcement made a difference in the outcome of the election. And we also just heard in an op-ed her campaign chairman talk about something being deeply broken within the FBI. He talked about thinking that the investigation early on was lackadaisical in his words.

So what do you think about those comments? Do you think there's any truth to them? Do you think there's a danger there that they are calling into question the integrity of institutions in a similar way that Donald Trump's team has done?

And the second part to that is that Donald Trump's team repeatedly - he is giving the indication that the investigation of the Russian hack as well as the retaliation might not be such a priority once he is in office. So what do you think the risk is there and are you going to talk to him directly about some of those comments he made? OBAMA: Well, on the latter point, as I said before, the transition

from election season to governance season is not always smooth. You know, it's bumpy. There's still feelings that are raw out there. There are people who are still thinking about how things unfolded and I get all that. But when Donald Trump takes the oath of office and is sworn in as the 45th president of the United States then he has got a different set of responsibilities and considerations. And I have said this before, I think there is a sobering process when you walk into the oval office. And I haven't shared previously private conversations I have had with the president-elect. Will say that they have been cordial and in some cases have involved me making some pretty specific suggestions about how to ensure that regardless of our obvious big disagreements about policy, maybe I can transmit some thoughts about maintaining the effectiveness, integrity, cohesion of the office, our various democratic institutions and he's -- has listened. I can't say that he will end up implementing but the conversations themselves have been cordial as opposed to defensive in any way. And I will always make myself available to him just as previous presidents have made themselves available to me as issues come up.

With respect to the FBI, I will tell you, I have had a chance to know a lot of FBI agents. I know director Comey. They take their jobs seriously. They work really hard. They help keep us safe and save a lot of lives. And it is always a challenge for law enforcement when there's an intersection between the work that they are doing and the political system. It's one of the difficulties of democracy generally.

We have a system where we want our law enforcement investigators and our prosecutors to be free from politics, to be independent, to play it straight but sometimes that involves investigations that touch on politics and particularly in this hyper-partisan environment that we have been in everything is suspect. Everything you do one way or the other.

One thing that I have that done is to be pretty scrupulous about not wading into investigation decisions or prosecution decisions or decisions not to prosecute. I have tried to be really strict in my own behavior about preserving the independence of law enforcement free from my own judgments and political assessments in some cases and I don't know why I would stop now.

[15:15:24] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Mr. President. On Aleppo, your views that what happens there is the responsibility of the Russian government, the Iranian government, the Assad regime are pretty well known. But do you, as president of the United States, leader of the free world, feel any personal moral responsibility now at the end of your presidency for the carnage that we are all watching in Aleppo which I'm sure disturbs you, you've said disturbs you.

Secondly also on Aleppo, you have again made clear your practical disagreements with and president-elect Trump has throughout his campaign and said again last night that he wants to create safe zones in Syria. Do you feel like in this transition you need to help him toward implementing that? Is that not something you should be doing? OBAMA: Mike, I always feel responsible. I felt responsible when kids

were being shot by snipers. I felt responsible when millions of people had been displaced. I feel responsible for murder and slaughter that's taken place in South Sudan that's not being reported on, partly because there's not as much social media being generated from there.

There are places around the world where horrible things are happening. And because of my office, because I'm president of the United States, I feel responsible. I ask myself every single day, is there something I could do that would save lives and make a difference and spare some child who doesn't deserve to suffer? So that's a starting point.

There's not a moment during the course of this presidency where I haven't felt some responsibility. That's true, by the way, for our own country. When I came into office and people were losing their jobs and losing their homes and losing their pensions, I felt responsible. And I would go home at night and I would ask myself, was there something better that I could do or smarter that I could be that would make a difference in their lives? That would relieve their suffering and relieve their hardship.

So with respect to Syria, what I have consistently done is taken the best course that I can to try to end the civil war while having also to take into account the long-term national security interests of the United States. And throughout this process, based on hours of meetings, if you tallied it up, days or weeks of meetings where we went through every option in painful detail with maps and we had our military and we had our aid agencies and we had our diplomatic teams and sometimes we'd bring in outsiders who were critics of ours. Wherever we went through it, the challenge was that short of putting large numbers of U.S. troops on the ground, uninvited, without any international law mandate, without sufficient support from Congress at a time when we still had troops in Afghanistan and we still had troops in Iraq and we had just gone through over a decade of war and spent trillions of dollars and when the opposition on the ground was not cohesive enough to necessarily govern a country. And you had a military superpower in Russia prepared to do whatever it took to keep its client state involved. And you had a regional military power in Iran that saw their own vital strategic interests at stake and were willing to send in as many of their people or proxies to support the regime. And in that circumstance unless we were all in and going to take over Syria we were going to have problems. And that everything else was tempting because we wanted to do something and it sounded like the right thing to do but it was going to be impossible to do this on the cheap. And in that circumstance I have to make a decision as president of the United States as to what is best -- I'm sorry, what's going on? Somebody's not feeling good? Why don't we have -- we can get our doctors back there to help out. Somebody want to go to my doctor's office and just have them -- all right, where was I?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Doing it on the cheap.

OBAMA: We couldn't do it on the cheap. Now it may be --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We need to get a doctor in here, I think, can that be arranged?

OBAMA: Can somebody help out, please and get Dr. Jackson in here? Is somebody grabbing our doctor?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, Mr. President, for stopping.

OBAMA: Of course. In the meantime, just give her a little room. The doctor will be here in a second.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pick her up.

OBAMA: Do you guys know where the doctor's office is? Just go through the palm doors. It's right next to the map room. There he is. All right, there's Doc Jackson. He's all right. OK. The doctor's in the house.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You were saying there was nothing you could do on the cheap.

OBAMA: So -- and I don't mean that -- I mean that with all sincerity. I understand the impulse to want to do something. But ultimately what I have had to do is to think about what can we sustain? What is realistic? And my first priority has to be, what's the right thing to do for America? And it has been our view that the best thing to do has been to provide some support to the moderate opposition so that they could sustain themselves and that we wouldn't see anti-Assad regime sentiments just pouring into al-Nusra and Al-Qaeda or ISIL. That we engaged our international partners in order to put pressure on all the parties involved. And to try to resolve this through diplomatic and political means.

I cannot claim that we have been successful. And so that's something that, as is true with a lot of issues and problems around the world, I have to go to bed with every night. But I continue to believe it was the right approach given what realistically we could get done.

Absent a decision, as I said, to go into much more significant way. And that I think would not have been sustainable or good for the American people because we had a whole host of other obligations that we also had to meet, wars we had already started and that were not yet finished.

With respect to the issue of safe zones. It is a continued problem, a continued challenge with safe zones, if you're setting up those zones on Syrian territory than that requires some force that is willing to maintain that territory in the absence of consent from the Syrian government and now the Russians or the Iranians. So it may be that with Aleppo's tragic situation unfolding that in the short term if we can get more of the tens of thousands who are still trapped there out that so long as the world's eyes are on them and they are feeling pressure, the regime and Russia concludes that they are willing to find some arrangement perhaps in coordination with Turkey whereby those people can be safe. Even that will probably be temporary but at least it solves a short-term issue that's going to arise.

Unfortunately, we are not even there yet because right now we have Russians and Assad claiming that basically all the innocent civilians who were trapped in Aleppo are out when international organizations, humanitarian organizations who know better and who are on the ground have said unequivocally that there's still tens of thousands who are trapped and prepared to leave under pretty much any conditions. And so, right now our biggest priority is to continue to put pressure wherever we can to try to get them out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Notwithstanding --

OBAMA: Mike, I can't have too much --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But do you feel responsibility not withstanding to move in that direction or help president-elect Trump (INAUDIBLE).

OBAMA: I will help president-elect Trump with any advice, counsel, information, that we can provide so that he once he is sworn in and can make a decision. Between now and then these are decisions I have that to make based on consultations I have with our military and the people who have been working this every single day. Peter Alexander.

[15:28:00] PETER ALEXANDER, REPORTER: Mr. President, thank you very much.

Can you, given the intelligence we have heard, assure the public that this was, once and for all, a free and fair election?

And specifically on Russia, do you feel any obligation now as they have been insisting that this isn't the case, to show the proof, as it were, that I say put your money where your mouth is and declassify some of the intelligence on the evidence that exists.

And more broadly as it relates to Donald Trump on this topic, are you concerned about his relationship with Vladimir Putin given some of the recent cabinet picks including his selection for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who toasted Putin with champagne over oil deals together? Thank you.

OBAMA: I may be getting older, because these multipart questions I start losing track.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Free and fair.

OBAMA: I can assure the public that there was not the kind of tampering with the voting process that was of concern and will continue to be of concern going forward that the votes that were cast were counted. They were counted appropriately. We have not seen evidence of machines being tampered with. So that assurance I can provide. That doesn't mean that we find every single potential probe of every single voting machine all across the country but we paid a lot of attention to it. We worked with state officials, et cetera. And we feel confident that that didn't occur and that the votes were cast and they were counted. And -- so that's on that point. What was the second one?

ALEXANDER: The second one was about declassification?

OBAMA: Declassification. Look.